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UK neobank Revolut introduced Revolut Junior, a product targeted toward children 7-17 years of age, TechCrunch reports. Revolut Junior integrates directly with the primary Revolut app, enabling parents who are Revolut users to create a Revolut Junior account for their child. After that, their child can download the Revolut Junior app and get a Revolut Junior card.
The new app offers a limited interface, including the ability to see transactions in real time and configurable card settings. And parents can control their child's spending via the Revolut app, instantly transfer money to Junior accounts, disable card features like online payments, and receive a notification when their child uses their card. Revolut Junior is currently only available to the neobank's Premium and Metal customers in the UK, but Revolut plans to roll it out to more users and more countries in the long term.
Revolut Junior could help drive customer stickiness by getting entire families to use Revolut. While bringing children onboard with Revolut may not be a big driver of revenue or customer engagement for the neobank, it could yield a significantly higher level of customer loyalty.
If parents use Revolut themselves and use Revolut Junior to manage their children's allowance and spending, it's likely to become more of an ingrained part of their finance management. This could make them more reluctant to give up Revolut, even if they are confronted with a better offer from a competing bank. Further, these more loyal customers are also paying to use Revolut - since Junior accounts are only available to Premium and Metal subscribers - meaning they also drive revenue for the neobank.
Revolut Junior could also generate new business for Revolut when teens get old enough for their own accounts. If older Revolut Junior users - those aged 15 to 17, for example - get familiar with using their Junior account, they may be more likely to opt to get a Revolut account as their first independent bank account when they outgrow their Junior account.
This would be a boon to Revolut, as UK consumers seem to be sticking with their bank accounts and switching banks with decreasing regularity. The amount of current account switches handled by the UK Current Account Switch Service (Cass) decreased between Q1 2019 and Q2 2019 and then again between Q2 2019 and Q3 2019, per data from Cass cited by Fintech Futures.
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